After lifileucel approval, what comes next?
FDA’s approval for melanoma is only the first step for lifileucel. Iovance has already started enrolling participants in a
large trial combining lifileucel with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda) as an initial treatment for advanced melanoma.
Lifileucel is also well along in testing as a treatment for other cancers, including showing promising tumor responses in
people with advanced lung cancer, as well as ovarian and head and neck cancers.
Dr. Rosenberg’s lab and others are testing newer forms of TIL-based therapies in clinical trials, and not just for melanoma, but for other solid cancers.
“There are clear examples where TIL therapy has caused regression of [other solid] tumors,” Dr. Rosenberg said. That includes complete eradication of tumors in individual patients with
advanced colon cancerExit Disclaimer and
advanced breast cancertreated in clinical trials at the NIH Clinical Center.
With this “landmark approval” in hand, there is a lot of optimism surrounding TIL therapy and cellular therapy more broadly, Dr. Shoushtari said. “I expect that this [approval] will be the tip of the iceberg for cellular-based immune therapy for solid tumors,” he added.
The first-generation TILs like lifileucel are “an important advance and proof of concept” that these treatments can be highly effective, he said. “But much remains to be done to broaden [their] use, both for other cancer types and to a broader range of people with melanoma.”
Dr. Sharfman agreed. “That is the challenge: to design better TILs.”
Researchers are already taking up this challenge, include finding ways to make TILs that are more potent and that can be used in a broader range of solid tumors. Dr. Rosenberg’s group at NCI, for example, has developed
a process for identifying TILs that strongly recognize a tumorand are most likely to attack it.
Researchers have also begun genetic engineering of TILs, with the goal of increasing the number of people who respond to the treatment or eliminating the need for the pre-infusion chemotherapy or post-infusion IL-2.
Dr. Rosenberg stressed that the decades of research on cancer cellular therapies by his and other groups has paved the way for rapid advances.
“We now have the knowledge of how to help the immune system target tumors,” particularly the solid tumors “that are responsible for the vast majority of cancer deaths,” he said. “There is a world of opportunities out there.”